Always Be Learning, Always Belonging

The PUGS vision

Our vision is a community where everyone has access to the education needed to transform their lives throughout their lives.

The PUGS mission

Our mission is to provide the learning and community necessary for human flourishing for the 50 years after formal schooling ends.

MANIFESTO

Education is a human right. Learning is central to human flourishing, personal possibility, and individual freedom. Education creates the personal agency and freedom of thought necessary for democracy to function.

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits." - Martin Luther King

For education to be a right, it has to be affordable and accessible for people's entire lives. Everyone has the right to grow and change throughout their lives. However, society has set up education so it ends in your 20s. The university-industrial complex is hierarchical, exclusive, and expensive. It currently costs upwards of $40,000 a year to keep going to school. We believe that access to learning needs to be lifelong, participatory, and affordable. For democracy to flourish, everyone should have economic access to education. Our Generosity + Pricing Policy allows anyone to come to our courses, regardless of income. Side benefit: more diverse + interesting classrooms and communities.

“A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.” - Ivan Illich

Everyone is a learner and everyone is a teacher. For life. As the world changes faster and faster, we have to keep learning to stay engaged, participate as citizens, and live fully. For the rest of our lives.

"Our learning institutions, for the most part, are acting as if the world has not suddenly, irrevocably, cataclysmically, epistemically changed - and changed precisely in the area of learning." - Cathy N. Davison

You support this for everyone. The best way to learn + grow is to enter a community of people who are as curious, engaged, and motivated as you are. And the best way to be part of a community is to support it with your time, money, and energy.